From Guns to Gavels: How Justice Grew Up in the Outlaw West

When a thirteen-year-old boy strikes out on his own in 1885, leaving his Civil War-ravaged Mississippi homeland for the wild Red River borderland between North Texas and Indian Territory, the American West is a land beyond the reach of the law. Crime thrives in the absence of law officers, courtrooms, judges, and jails. Vigilante justice, the posse, and the hangman's noose fill the void. But by the time the young man--now a veteran outlaw--dies by the gun in 1929 after a tempestuous career,...